Be Cool, Calm, & Collected (No Matter What)

"Mastering others is strength; mastering yourself is true power."

In the soundtrack of life, your nervous system serves as both the conductor and the orchestra, your responses to the world around you are the songs you sing to the world.

Yet, when this symphony becomes discordant, even the gentlest breeze can feel like a raging wind. Navigating the realms of your nervous system, particularly in the face of stress, becomes an art of self-awareness and self-regulation.

At the heart of nervous system regulation lies a simple yet profound truth: the willingness to embrace discomfort.

It’s Time You Learn This (Or Stay Stuck Behind)

When faced with stressors, be they large or small, your nervous system responds in ways that are deeply ingrained within you. These responses often manifest as the classic trio: fight or flight, freeze, or fawn.

Fight of flight

This response urges you to either confront or flee from perceived threats.

This could look like starting a fight with your crush when you get insecure about how much they like you, or (my own historical go-to) the classic cut-and-run where you peace out before you ever ask them how serious they are about you.

Freeze

This response leads you to dissociate or numb yourself, rendering you immobile.

For example, we’ve all indulged too much in either alcohol, shopping, the internet, Netflix, work, or food at one point or another. My go-to was red wine in the bathtub as “self-care” or beers with the buds any night of the week to “relieve the stress of the day.”

Fawn

With this response you seek to appease others in an attempt to diffuse tension. Like an over-attempt to understand, befriend, and heal the mother that’s criticized you your whole life.

You don’t have to notice these things while they are happening or “catch them” before they happen to see profound results from this experiment.

Here’s the easiest place to start:

Grab Your Lab Coat (We’re Gathering Data)

Review your last 24 hours.

• What stressed you out?

• How did that make you feel?

• Did you address it or run from it? Did you take care of it or hide from it? Did you manage it or fall all over it?

This is how you practice and build awareness when you have none.

I’m convinced that awareness is the most underrated skill of the 21st century.

Unless you’ve worked at it, you won’t have great awareness. Unless you’ve mastered it, you’re a puppet living by the wild pulls of string that are your dysregulated nervous system responses.

I wrote about more simple tools to combat inattentional blindness and build awareness of the little things in the Letter “In, Out, and Up.” Read it here.

Once you’ve built your awareness muscle a bit, you’ll progress to present-moment awareness, where you can “catch” yourself in the moment of a surge of emotion.

When you notice an uncomfortable emotion arising, pause. Take a breath.

Notice your instinctive response: “I feel like (hiding in the bathroom) (screaming) (ignoring her disrespect).”

Are you inclined to fight, flee, freeze, or fawn?

Understanding this default pattern is the next step towards reclaiming agency over your emotional landscape.

In this process of self-discovery, you’ll uncover the profound power of choice. Rather than allowing your emotions to dictate your actions, you’ll cultivate the ability to respond consciously. While you may not control the ocean of your emotions, you can learn to surf its waves.

Self-mastery requires the courage to:

• Sit with discomfort

• Question ingrained patterns

• Choose a different path than you’ve previously taken

It will feel risky. That’s just because it’s new.

Embrace the vulnerability of discomfort as the gateway to resilience.

How to be Cool, Calm, & Collected (No Matter What)

Here are three simple yet potent practices to gain nervous system regulation while on your journey:

Cultivate Mindfulness

Begin by cultivating a daily mindfulness practice. Whether it's meditation, deep breathing exercises, or simply taking moments of stillness, mindfulness allows you to anchor yourself in the present moment, fostering clarity and equanimity.

This practice will take you from inattentional blindness to awareness.

Instead of looking back and thinking “why the heck did I just do that?,” you’ll be able to catch yourself before you react and notice, “I can feel my urge to freeze, or escape, from this experience… but maybe I won’t do that today.”

You build two superpowers when you practice mindfulness: control and choice.

Embrace Emotional Intelligence

Develop a keen awareness of your emotional landscape. Notice the subtle nuances of your feelings and the corresponding bodily sensations.

Do you know the difference between anger and resentment?

Do you understand the subtleties that separate envy from jealousy?

Knowing the difference takes a bit of studying. Intelligence is a skill, after all.

However, unlike calculus, this is one subject that you will actually use every single day of your life moving forward.

By honing your emotional intelligence, you gain insight into the underlying drivers of your behavior. This is the secret to empowering yourself to respond with wisdom rather than reactivity.

Foster Self-Compassion

Cultivate a compassionate relationship with yourself. Offer yourself the same kindness and understanding that you would extend to a dear friend facing a similar struggle.

This advice sounds so annoyingly easy, even as I write it, but I know it can be sneakily tricky to practice.

Try this (in order): 

1. Write a letter to a "friend" explaining your problem

2. Meditate for 5 minutes

3. Write a letter back to yourself (from your "friends" perspective)

This will help create space between you and the thoughts in your head, plus help you gain a compassionate perspective of your life.

Keep It Simple, Smartie

And amid the cacophony of stress that is modern life, our ability to regulate your nervous system is revolutionary.

By delving into the depths of your reactions, you uncover a fundamental truth: embracing discomfort is the gateway to self-mastery.

Through self-awareness and regulation, you can navigate the tumultuous waters of fight or flight, freeze, or fawn responses.

As you cultivate mindfulness, emotional intelligence, and self-compassion, you will unlock the profound power of choice, guiding you to surf the waves of our emotions with grace and resilience.

I hope this helps.

Jenna Lou